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The Lincoln Letters: a Study in Institutional Change

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The Lincoln Letters: a Study in Institutional Change This is a repository copy of The Lincoln Letters: A Study in Institutional Change. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/141492/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Davie, G and Starkey, C orcid.org/0000-0002-7807-6617 (2019) The Lincoln Letters: A Study in Institutional Change. Ecclesial Practices, 6 (1). pp. 44-64. ISSN 2214-4463 https://doi.org/10.1163/22144471-00601001 © 2019 by Koninklijke Brill. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Ecclesial Practices. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ The Lincoln Letters: A Study in Institutional Change Grace Daviea and C. Starkeyb* aSociology, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK; bSchool of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK. *Dr Caroline Starkey, School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science, Botany House, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS29JT, UK. +44 (0)1133430642, [email protected], @caro_starkey, ORCID ID: 0000-0002-7807-6617 This work was supported by the Church of England Diocese of Lincoln. 1 The Lincoln Letters: A Study in Institutional Change Abstract On Friday 2nd September 2016, The Guardian published an online article entitled ‘Bishop of Grantham first C of E bishop to declare he is in a gay relationship.’ In response, a large quantity of correspondence was sent to the Bishop from members of the public, the vast majority expressing support. In this paper, we set the empirical data contained in the letters themselves within a context of continuing change in both society and the Church of England. We consider the reactions of the Church at the ‘tipping points’ of social change as it seeks to balance its responsibilities as a guardian of ‘truth’ with the need to keep in touch with modern ways of living. A key concept underpinning our analysis will be the notion of ‘vicarious religion’, which deals with the subtle but continuing relationships between the actively faithful and a wider body of more loosely attached adherents. Keywords Anglican, Britain, Christianity, clergy, document analysis, religion, sexualities 2 Introduction Dear Father, I feel neither of us are prolific letter writers, or campaigners of any sort, but there are some occasions where the need to write becomes overwhelming. The revelation regarding your personal life over the weekend, we feel, is such an occasion…The fact that such a statement can make every news bulletin for two days running on all major UK channels may mean the Church of England isn’t as irrelevant as we thought it was! (Letter 503) On Friday 2nd September 2016, Nicholas Chamberlain, the Bishop of Grantham, announced that he was gay and in a relationship – the first Church of England bishop to do so publically. The declaration, which was published online in The Guardian, was followed over the weekend by a handful of short media appearances on national radio and television, subsequently repeated on local and world-service networks, and discussed on social media.1 The catalyst for the Bishop’s declaration and his public media appearances was his threatened ‘outing’ by a Sunday newspaper.2 Within four days of the media attention, 410 pieces of mail addressed either to the Bishop or to the Lincoln Diocesan office arrived, the vast majority (over 90%) expressing support for the Bishop’s position. Almost 100 more arrived in the next few weeks.3 The Bishop’s personal journey, lived out in the public eye, inspired an outpouring of support from friends, current and former parishioners, clergy, and strangers, many of whom had no particular religious affiliation or connection to the Church of England. 1 The Guardian article is available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/02/nicholas-chamberlain-bishop-of-grantham- c-of-e-gay-relationship. The media appearances included the BBC national news and an interview on Radio 4’s Sunday programme. 2 Why ‘outing a bishop’ is considered newsworthy is, of course, a question in its own right. It cannot be explored in depth in this article but raises important issues for the churches, the media, their readers and the society of which they are part. 3 Social media networks were also active and their content was equally positive; these sources are not covered in this article. 3 Intrigued by this unsolicited and unexpectedly positive response, the Bishops of Lincoln and Grantham asked us to look at this corpus of material.4 Our task was to make sociological sense of its content. Specifically we were asked to explore who the letter writers were, their reasons for writing, and their principal arguments. A short report was prepared for the College of Bishops for use within the Church of England.5 This article takes a broader view and sets this episode and the letters themselves within a context of continuing change in both society and the church – specifically the Church of England. The distinctive identity of this Church and its relationship both to British (more specifically English) society, and to the wider Anglican Communion, will be central to the discussion.6 We interrogate three overlapping questions. The first relates to the wider society and a whole series of moral or ethical changes that have taken place in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The marked shift in societal attitudes towards homosexuality and same-sex relationships forms part of a continuing trajectory; it is not an isolated episode. The second question considers the reactions of the churches to such changes as they seek to balance their responsibilities as guardians of the sacred with the need to keep in touch with modern ways of living. The letters speak powerfully to the existence and (non-)resolution of these tensions. The final question is a little different and relates to the decision-making 4 For the record, one of us is a practising Anglican; the other has a different faith commitment. The complementarity proved helpful in reflecting on our material. 5 The Lincoln Letters: A Report for the College of Bishops (August 2017). 6 See Mark Chapman, Anglicanism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) for an introduction to the Church of England, its place in English society and in the Anglican Communion. More developed accounts can be found in Mark Chapman, Sathianathan Clarke and Martyn Percy, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Anglican Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); and Paul Avis, The Identity of Anglicanism: Essentials of Anglican Ecclesiology (London: T and T Clark International, 2008). 4 process itself and focusses on the Church of England in particular. The discussion pays attention as much to institutional constraints as it does to doctrinal issues. A key concept in this analysis will be the notion of ‘vicarious religion’, which deals with the subtle but continuing relationships between the actively faithful and a wider body of more loosely- attached adherents. The idea is particularly relevant to the first and second questions outlined above in that it pivots on the relationship between churches and the societies of which they are part. This is a substantial and unexpected body of material that demands careful sociological analysis, but we must be clear from the outset about the limitations of these data. This is not a representative sample of Church of England members as a whole, or, indeed, of English society. The letters are from a self-selecting group of people (albeit a surprising number of them) who have chosen to express their personal views on homosexuality and same-sex relationships (both within and without the Church) in response to a specific issue that garnered national and international media attention. Yet, despite this caveat, the vast majority of the letters hold in common a particular motivation – a desire for the Church of England to respond inclusively towards non-heteronormative sexualities, on behalf of the population it exists to serve. Here, in personal and in many ways intimate correspondence, the authors are not only calling the Church to account, but willing Church leaders to navigate this complex terrain correctly, in what the great majority of them perceive as the best interests of wider society. Alongside individual stories, these letters reveal a particular way of relating to the established Church within a context that has borne witness to a decline of formal Anglican affiliation.7 7 Grace Davie, Religion in Britain: A Persistent Paradox (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2015). 5 As such, they are a unique dataset with which to conduct sociological analysis into the role of religion, and specifically the role of the Church of England, in late modern society. They complement and should be read alongside the growing body of data, both quantitative and qualitative, on what is sometimes termed the Anglican penumbra or ‘silent majority’ – a diminishing but none the less significant constituency in English life.8 The approach in this article is inductive. It begins with a brief account of the methodology used in the analysis of the letters, followed by an introduction to the letters themselves, their authors and their reasons for writing.
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